An Eastern Lily (Poem by A Chief Among Sinners)

Father, am I no longer a fawn faced Eastern Lily among the wanton wine crimson carnations and where the reeds sing a sweet whistle? Do you hear the murmur of wind which stings my flesh as some golden flame of dawn or see the glinted salt of my silver sweat touch my brow? Am I any longer an Egyptian Flower growing on the humid shore of sand by the Nile, as some wild lavender lotus? Or am I weed, a lone thistle? I hear the trembling scarlet river of mortal blood ring in some forgotten ancient trill, like the chant of red plumed cranes! What is the fruit I sow? Salt, salt as crude cold crystals at my brow, dry, dry as the rainless desert shivering with raw red sores in the leper dunes! O’, Father, look how the French tamarisk of blush rose blossoms sings some aged Hebrew song by the berry tainted Nile, Wind, wind as the fire on the writhing skinny sprig bush in the wild desert, cease, cease as man on his final day, in the creation of his ruins! Father, you see I look at the trembling pale (pale as sheep’s wool) cemetery iris under the tress of scornful moonlight in this gold delta of gentiles- But am I a lonely white blossom in the breath of glistening mist by the aureate marge of dust by the vernal river Nile? Or some frost bit brier? Crocodiles among the sweet (sweet as a Mother’s milk) virgin calla lilies who eat of infant flesh, are where the wild reeds trill some foreign song, Am I like the eastern lilies at the crimson blue shoal of the wrinkled blue veined stream on the desert or a flickering hinder of orange fire? What is that ring as the wanton red reeds, as the chant of Hebrew birdsong, is it some sweet sea zephyr I never felt, what is this rustic song? Wind and fire, salt and sea, hear this cry of mine along the Nile as some porcelain lilac lily afloat the golden waves in the primal desert! The jackals howl in the sand and the foolish satyrs dance in flames drunken on the Roman white wine, but what am I? what do I sing, Father? What is a desert rose in the heat withered bush? What lustrous red fruit do I bare at my bosom? Is this mild tune I hear, the one they try to pervert? What is a golden (blood tinted) Egyptian flower in the prick of frost flamed wind? The white salt taints my lips and blood rings and I know of nothing cruder. Father! what am I! what fruit do I bear! This soft (soft as a whisper) choir music sung to the early empires in such exotic forgotten splendor, Is but the warm whistling of the reeds I have heard and the sweet sea zephyr I never felt on my mortal flesh, it is you singing I hear! The Nile of infant blood is like some Greek siren or Norse ocean maid, rattling as Medieval cathedral bells, what shall I ponder? I want to be a white (white as a star) Eastern Lily among the amber weeping slender vernal poplars, but the murmurs wail at my ear! Sire, while my father and I were at the soughing lavender river laving the aching soil from our feet (for we carried no perfume) a man came to us, He told my father whose brow did not slick with a drop of silver sweat and I whose pale cheek froze with dew this, “Dance at the Passover,” The man exclaimed as his nut brown face disfigured, “Be forgiven of sin and chant some ancient Hebrew song to be saved,” he told us, I feast at the warm lilac dusk, and there I whisper my nightfall vespers but am I to wander these deserts as some nomad searching for a Savior? My skin shivered in the iron night in the polished (of shattered star dust) mist as some timid florid desert bloom and I asked the African man this, “is it by the fruit I bear at my breast like Eden’s crimson apple, do I perish or find where the angels sing?” and I looked to the darkened heaven, Lord, what is this blossom I wilt as if it were touched by the first ray of crystalline frost at noon of Winter? Am I even like the green orchids? No! if I eat swine and bleed some more haggard sores do I perish? I am no Eastern Lily nor an Egyptian flower for I bore transgression! My Father in Heaven, my sweet pure Brother, how is it you have forgiven such a scathing fool as I? for I am no water lily who can only weep, The fruit – the fruit it rings as above the sheol of Tantalus, as the bare nymphs who bored Hylas away, its some hateful oceanic siren! I fain no tender laugh for I dwell in the pit of blasphemy! Where is the river for I am at thirst, I only have my blood, how do I water my sheep? O’, I confess, I confess, my God and Savior! Thunder do not mute my shriek for mercy this crimson night! I only wish to be your Rose of Sharon. Dry wind that burns the curve of my brow, do not wrench my elegy to Heaven I pray! For I only wish to see my Lord’s divine immortal face! Listen you wild river Nile, you sinful brook of blood, do not pervert my words by your voice! For I will be consumed by some hungry lioness! O’, desert sand sleep tonight, please! Keeper, command the silence of the faded withered grass so I may speak? For I come from a grievous race, For Lord, I tangle in some thicket of thorns, and I wish to be but your disciple, don’t let me fall as that youth on his sword, that boy, Pyramus! Father, let me be an Eastern Lily who does not sow seeds of amber grain or reaps golden straw at the tide of the scorching noon, The red reeds now whistle louder, as a pierce of lightning, the bronze idols are washing at the Nile’s bay! O’, my God, I have no strength, The blue heron’s catch snake skinned fish in their beak, Cleopatra swallows pearls in her evening wine, and I eat of bitter fruit as a loon, I pray to you, eternal God, with the scars of nails at your palms, forgive me for I deserve but the fire which rages in hell, for I am not a youth. As Icarus at smoldering dawn, I fell to be shook and swallowed by the sterling green waves tempering at the lavender bronze moonlight, And I visit those grand white pale temples held with powdered columns far in the Mediterranean, and the limestone pyramids, I now softly laugh, at the sand dusted face of the Sphinx, he asks riddles to the nomads who roam, for this fruit is as the water sprites, But in the gray opaque fog by the Nile, is a place where the red reeds sing some ancient song of the Hebrew and Gentile men who were timid. The bronze calf reigns in the wilderness, the idol crushed into golden sand now in the fresh earthen spring in the wanton blistered desert, The porcelain (with naked breasts) Grecian figures, hang as the phantom of that pale scarlet fruit which does not let me bloom as an Eastern Lily, Fair Lady Lilith stares at the rippling mirror at her palm, and worships herself, but I do not want to be like some wrinkled fig in a thistle girt, Deliver me, my Lord from these idols and statues who spill drops of crystal glint water into snow pale urns, for I am as Goliath and Achilles! The whistling reeds at the Nile do not sing for a mortal man, a man of dust and nothing, of bone, flesh, and blood, it does not sing to us Gentiles, Nor does the wind prow as fire at the bush for a woman or child descendant of Adam and Eve no! it does not strike orange blooms for the Hebrew, The rivers do not ring for me, nor the lilies grow for my sisters or brothers, neither the desert howls for my mother and father, we are but exiles, But only for the Messiah whom I root myself to as the eastern lily or Egyptian flower at the Nile, He is why bruises no longer beat or brew.

Author's Note: This poem was partly inspired by my own experiences and Edwin Long’s painting, “Eastern Lily.”